Hamas, the Muslim fundamentalist party that controls the Gaza Strip, the other territory of the Palestine Authority, said that the terrorist incident demonstrates how unfruitful the negotiations set between Abbas and the Israelis are likely to be.

In addition, vigilante colonists have set up scattered squatter settlements that are considered illegal even in Israeli law. It is those that the government sometimes dismantles, in part because they are amid Palestinian villages and the colonists are difficult to protect.

The Israeli government need not worry too much. The militant Israeli squatters are heavily armed and have a vigilante ethos, and have been attacking Palestinians in their villages and preventing them from harvesting their olive groves that lie near Israeli colonies.

Having often received carte blanche from the authorities to terrorize Palestinians in other ways, they can hardly be blamed for thinking it perfectly natural to now engage in arson against their holy sites.

The Mideast is on tenterhooks. Jordan is terrified that far rightwing Israeli foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman will attempt to ethnically cleanse the Palestinians and displace them to Jordan. They also fear that the Jordan river will be dried up by extensive Israeli siphoning. Lebanon is jittery about another attack on Beirut. Iran has pledged to defend Syria if the Israelis attack Damascus, over the alleged transfer to Lebanese Shiite party-militia Hizbullah of SCUD missiles.

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13 Responses

I am really curious to know how many churches have been destroyed or damaged by settlers. Having lived and worked in the West Bank in the 80’s I was shocked at how racist these mostly American settlers were. I just want some facts, though, if they are targeting only mosques. Anybody here know?

Also, I was wondering whether you could maybe post on or provide links to where I could find information on racist language and general racism towards Palestinians and Arabs from Israeli politicians, past and present. So far, I’ve only found some quotes on Mindprod, but I was wondering whether you had any other resources. Thanks in advance.

Thanks for the link to the yahoo group. About you’re search for resources, can suggest Jonathan Cook’s book “Blood and Religion: The Unmasking of the Jewish and Democratic State.” Recently read it myself and cites a lot of Israeli politicians and Israeli judges and court cases based mostly on recent Israeli history say mid 90’s to 2006 (what I refer to as the militant emergence).

Sadly cannot think of a web resource for the quotes, maybe the Angry Arab archives since he reports a lot of the racist aspects.

KC

Well…., there aren’t too many Christians left in Israel and the West Bank. The churches have been desecrated alongside. Now, it seems the destruction of mosques and the hoped for expulsion of the Palestinians preclude… what? A settler type of Taliban? As go the Palestinians, there goes the moderate secular Israeli. Over here in the states, we have the far-right fundamentalist teabaggers who want to turn this country into a fascist Christian nation. These are some of the most ardent supporters of the militia settlers (some having hailed from America itself). Go figure.

Let’s hope that these Israeli terrorists don’t gain backing from teabagging creationists here in the US; otherwise, A. C. Clarke’s fictionalized tale “The Hammer of God” may indeed turn into a piece of nonfiction. But instead of creationist-backed Israeli terrorists sabotaging a scientific mission to destroy an asteroid bound for Earth, claiming that death by this asteroid is God’s Will, they’ll be sabotaging a secular mission to prevent a full-blown war from erupting in the Middle East, claiming that death by this war is God’s Will.

This alleged / confessed terrorist is not you average immigrant .
He is a privileged elite rich kid .
I remember the Bader Meinhof Gang – aka the Red Brigade .
Same story there .
Police work brought them to justice , but in the USA ?
Wars in Oilraq and Pipelineistan are expensive , so police are facing layoffs .
I think that rich kids ” going rogue ” are more of a clear and present danger than any peasant farmer – anywhere .

I can kinda see why Israeli Jews would feel an overwhelming need to settle on Palestinian land if the Jewish population in Israel was bursting at the seams, making unoccupied land so scarce throughout Israel that there’s no longer enough of it to go around to need meet their needs as a population. But this is far from the case.

The fact is that due to the slowdown in their birthrate coupled with a drop-off in the number of Jews immigrating to Israel, the population of Israeli Jews is in decline. In fact, their population is only growing at about half as fast as the population of Muslim Palestinians.

And from what I’ve read, though I can’t recall exactly where, some Jews in Israel view the high birthrate among the Palestinian population as “a demographic threat” to Jews and their livelihood. Plus I need not remind anyone here that “reducing a demographic threat” is just a polite and politically correct term for “ethnic cleansing.” So I shudder to think that Israeli Jews are bombing the hell out of Palestinians and are cutting off vital services to them as a way of reducing them as a demographic threat, which is nothing more than a way of reducing them by ethnic cleansing.

Angry Arab follows mid Eastern affairs very closely and being from that area originally, I think, he is very astute in his knowledge. He tends to get a little carried away with himself but he is still a very good source of information

The religious right wing “Dispensationalist” Christians in the US are and have been backing Israel for quite a while now. They are as fanatical about that as they are about their other religious beliefs.

Peace—

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